Gabriel Conroy

Their way lay by Monument Point and the dismantled cairn. Philip had already passed it on his way to the cañon, and had felt a thankfulness for the unexpected tragedy that had, as he believed, conscientiously relieved him of a duty to the departed naturalist, yet he could not forego a question.

"Is there anything among these papers and collections worth our preserving?" he asked the surgeon.

The doctor, who had not for many months had an opportunity to air his general scepticism, was nothing if not derogatory.

"No," he answered, shortly. "If there were any way that we might restore them to the living Dr. Devarges, they might minister to his vanity, and please the poor fellow. I see nothing in them that should make them worthy to survive him."

The tone was so like Dr. Devarges' own manner, as Philip remembered it, that he smiled grimly and felt relieved. When they reached the spot Nature seemed to have already taken the same cynical view; the metallic case was already deeply sunken in the snow, the wind had scattered the papers far and wide, and even the cairn itself had tumbled into a shapeless, meaningless ruin.

CHAPTER IX.

IN WHICH THE FOOTPRINTS ARE LOST FOR EVER

A fervid May sun had been baking the adobe walls of the Presidio of San Ramon, firing the red tiles, scorching the black courtyard, and driving the mules and vaqueros of a train that had just arrived into the shade of the long galleries of the quadrangle, when the Comandante, who was taking his noonday siesta in a low, studded chamber beside the guard-room, was gently awakened by his secretary. For thirty years the noonday slumbers of the Commander had never been broken; his first thought was the heathen! – his first impulse to reach for his trusty Toledo. But, as it so happened, the cook had borrowed it that morning to rake tortillas from the Presidio oven, and Don Juan Salvatierra contented himself with sternly demanding the reason for this unwonted intrusion.

"A señorita – an American – desires an immediate audience."

Don Juan removed the black silk handkerchief which he had tied round his grizzled brows, and sat up. Before he could assume a more formal attitude, the door was timidly opened, and a young girl entered. For all the disfigurement of scant, coarse, ill-fitting clothing, or the hollowness of her sweet eyes, and even the tears that dimmed their long lashes; for all the sorrow that had pinched her young cheek and straightened the corners of her childlike mouth, she was still so fair, so frank, so youthful, so innocent and helpless, that the Comandante stood erect, and then bent forward in a salutation that almost swept the floor. Apparently the prepossession was mutual. The young girl took a quick survey of the gaunt but gentlemanlike figure before her, cast a rapid glance at the serious but kindly eyes that shone above the Commander's iron-grey mustachios, dropped her hesitating, timid manner, and, with an impulsive gesture and a little cry, ran forward and fell upon her knees at his feet. The Commander would have raised her gently, but she restrained his hand.

"No, no, listen! I am only a poor, poor girl, without friends or home. A month ago, I left my family starving in the mountains, and came away to get them help. My brother came with me. God was good to us, Señor, and after a weary tramp of many days we found a trapper's hut, and food and shelter. Philip, my brother, went back alone to succour them. He has not returned. Oh, sir, he may be dead; they all may be dead – God only knows! It is three weeks ago since he left me; three weeks! It is a long time to be alone, Señor, a stranger in a strange land. The trapper was kind, and sent me here to you for assistance. You will help me? I know you will. You will find them, my friends, my little sister, my brother!"

The Commander waited until she had finished, and then gently lifted her to a seat by his side. Then he turned to his secretary, who, with a few hurried words in Spanish, answered the mute inquiry of the Commander's eyes. The young girl felt a thrill of disappointment as she saw that her personal appeal had been lost and unintelligible; it was with a slight touch of defiance that was new to her nature that she turned to the secretary who advanced as interpreter.

"You are an American?"

"Yes," said the girl, curtly, who had taken one of the strange, swift, instinctive dislikes of her sex to the man.

"How many years?"

"Fifteen."

The Commander, almost unconsciously, laid his brown hand on her clustering curls.

"Name?"

She hesitated and looked at the Commander.

"Grace," she said.

Then she hesitated; and, with a defiant glance at the secretary, added —

"Grace Ashley!"

"Give to me the names of some of your company, Mees Graziashly."

Grace hesitated.

"Philip Ashley, Gabriel Conroy, Peter Dumphy, Mrs. Jane Dumphy," she said at last.

The secretary opened a desk, took out a printed document, unfolded it, and glanced over its contents. Presently he handed it to the Commander with the comment "Bueno." The Commander said "Bueno" also, and glanced kindly and reassuringly at Grace.

"An expedition from the upper Presidio has found traces of a party of Americans in the Sierra," said the secretary monotonously. "There are names like these."

"It is the same – it is our party!" said Grace, joyously.

"You say so?" said the secretary, cautiously.

"Yes," said Grace, defiantly.

The secretary glanced at the paper again, and then said, looking at Grace intently —

"There is no name of Mees Graziashly."

The hot blood suddenly dyed the cheek of Grace and her eyelids dropped. She raised her eyes imploringly to the Commander. If she could have reached him directly, she would have thrown herself at his feet and confessed her innocent deceit, but she shrank from a confidence that first filtered through the consciousness of the secretary. So she began to fence feebly with the issue.

"It is a mistake," she said. "But the name of Philip, my brother, is there?"

"The name of Philip Ashley is here," said the secretary, grimly.

"And he is alive and safe!" cried Grace, forgetting in her relief and joy her previous shame and mortification.

"He is not found," said the secretary.

"Not found?" said Grace, with widely opened eyes.

"He is not there."

"No, of course," said Grace, with a nervous hysterical laugh; "he was with me; but he came back – he returned."

"On the 30th of April there is no record of the finding of Philip Ashley."

Grace groaned and clasped her hands. In her greater anxiety now, all lesser fears were forgotten. She turned and threw herself before the Commander.

"Oh, forgive me, Señor, but I swear to you I meant no harm! Philip is not my brother, but a friend, so kind, so good. He asked me to take his name, poor boy, God knows if he will ever claim it again, and I did. My name is not Ashley. I know not what is in that paper, but it must tell of my brother, Gabriel, my sister, of all! O, Señor, are they living or dead? Answer me you must – for – I am – I am Grace Conroy!"

The secretary had refolded the paper. He opened it again, glanced over it, fixed his eyes upon Grace, and, pointing to a paragraph, handed it to the Commander. The two men exchanged glances, the Commander coughed, rose, and averted his face from the beseeching eyes of Grace. A sudden death-like chill ran through her limbs as, at a word from the Commander, the secretary rose and placed the paper in her hands.

Grace took it with trembling fingers. It seemed to be a proclamation in Spanish.

"I cannot read it," she said, stamping her little foot with passionate vehemence. "Tell me what it says."

At a sign from the Commander, the secretary opened the paper and arose. The Commander, with his face averted, looked through the open window. The light streaming through its deep, tunnel-like embrasure, fell upon the central figure of Grace, with her shapely head slightly bent forward, her lips apart, and her eager, passionate eyes fixed upon the Commander. The secretary cleared his throat in a perfunctory manner; and, with the conscious pride of an irreproachable linguist, began —

"NOTICE.

"TO HIS EXCELLENCY THE COMANDANTE OF THE PRESIDIO OF SAN FELIPE.

"I have the honour to report that the expedition sent out to relieve certain distressed emigrants in the fastnesses of the Sierra Nevadas, said expedition being sent on the information of Don José Bluent of San Geronimo, found in a cañon east of the Canada del Diablo the evidences of the recent existence of such emigrants buried in the snow, and the melancholy and deeply-to-be-deplored record of their sufferings, abandonment, and death. A written record preserved by these miserable and most infelicitous ones gives the names and history of their organisation, known as 'Captain Conroy's Party,' a copy of which is annexed below.

"The remains of five of these unfortunates were recovered from the snow, but it was impossible to identify but two, who were buried with sacred and reverential rites.

"Our soldiers behaved with that gallantry, coolness, patriotism, inflexible hardihood, and high-principled devotion which ever animate the swelling heart of the Mexican warrior. Nor can too much praise be given to the voluntary efforts of one Don Arthur Poinsett, late Lieutenant of the Army of the United States of America, who, though himself a voyager and a stranger, assisted our commander in the efforts of humanity.

"The wretched dead appeared to have expired from hunger, although one was evidently a victim" —

The tongue of the translator hesitated a moment, and then with an air of proud superiority to the difficulties of the English language, he resumed —

"A victim to fly poison. It is to be regretted that among the victims was the famous Doctor Paul Devarges, a Natural, and collector of the stuffed Bird and Beast, a name most illustrious in science."

The secretary paused, his voice dropped its pretentious pitch, he lifted his eyes from the paper, and fixing them on Grace, repeated, deliberately —

"The bodies who were identified were those of Paul Devarges and Grace Conroy."

"Oh, no! no!" said Grace, clasping her hands, wildly; "it is a mistake! You are trying to frighten me, a poor, helpless, friendless girl! You are punishing me, gentlemen, because you know I have done wrong, because you think I have lied! Oh, have pity, gentlemen. My God – save me – Philip!"

And with a loud, despairing cry, she rose to her feet, caught at the clustering tendrils of her hair, raised her little hands, palms upward, high in the air, and then sank perpendicularly, as if crushed and beaten flat, a pale and senseless heap upon the floor.

The Commander stooped over the prostrate girl. "Send Manuela here," he said quickly, waving aside the proffered aid of the secretary, with an impatient gesture quite unlike his usual gravity, as he lifted the unconscious Grace in his arms.

An Indian waiting-woman hurriedly appeared, and assisted the Commander to lay the fainting girl upon a couch.

"Poor child!" said the Commander, as Manuela, bending over Grace, unloosed her garments with sympathetic feminine hands. "Poor little one, and without a father!"

"Poor woman!" said Manuela to herself, half aloud; "and without a husband."

BOOK II.

AFTER FIVE YEARS

CHAPTER I.

ONE HORSE GULCH

It was a season of unexampled prosperity in One Horse Gulch. Even the despondent original locator, who, in a fit of depressed alcoholism, had given it that infelicitous title, would have admitted its injustice, but that he fell a victim to the "craftily qualified" cups of San Francisco long before the Gulch had become prosperous. "Hed Jim stuck to straight whisky he might hev got his pile outer the very ledge whar his cabin stood," said a local critic. But Jim did not; after taking a thousand dollars from his claim, he had flown to San Franciscos, where, gorgeously arrayed, he had flitted from champagne to cognac, and from gin to lager beer, until he brought his gilded and ephemeral existence to a close in the country hospital.

Howbeit, One Horse Gulch survived not only its godfather, but the baleful promise of its unhallowed christening. It had its Hotel and its Temperance House, its Express office, its saloons, its two squares of low wooden buildings in the main street, its clustering nests of cabins on the hill-sides, its freshly-hewn stumps, and its lately-cleared lots. Young in years, it still had its memories, experiences and antiquities. The first tent pitched by Jim White was still standing, the bullet holes were yet to be seen in the shutters of the Cachucha saloon, where the great fight took place between Boston Joe, Harry Worth, and Thompson of Angel's; from the upper loft of Watson's "Emporium" a beam still projected from which a year ago a noted citizen had been suspended, after an informal inquiry into the ownership of some mules that he was found possessed of. Near it was a small unpretentious square shed, where the famous caucus had met that had selected the delegates who chose the celebrated and Honourable Blank to represent California in the councils of the nation.

It was raining. Not in the usual direct, honest, perpendicular fashion of that mountain region, but only suggestively, and in a vague, uncertain sort of way, as if it might at any time prove to be fog or mist, and any money wagered upon it would be hazardous. It was raining as much from below as above, and the lower limbs of the loungers who gathered around the square box stove that stood in Briggs's warehouse, exhaled a cloud of steam. The loungers in Briggs's were those who from deficiency of taste or the requisite capital avoided the gambling and drinking saloons, and quietly appropriated biscuits from the convenient barrel of the generous Briggs, or filled their pipes from his open tobacco canisters, with the general suggestion in their manner that their company fully compensated for any waste of his material.

They had been smoking silently – a silence only broken by the occasional hiss of expectoration against the hot stove, when the door of a back room opened softly, and Gabriel Conroy entered.

"How is he gettin' on, Gabe?" asked one of the loungers.

"So, so," said Gabriel. "You'll want to shift those bandages again," he said, turning to Briggs, "afore the doctor comes. I'd come back in an hour, but I've got to drop in and see how Steve's gettin' on, and it's a matter of two miles from home."

"But he says he won't let anybody tech him but you," said Mr. Briggs.

"I know he says so," said Gabriel, soothingly; "but he'll get over that. That's what Stimson sed when he was took worse, but he got over that, and I never got to see him except in time to lay him out."

The justice of this was admitted even by Briggs, although evidently disappointed. Gabriel was walking to the door, when another voice from the stove stopped him.

"Oh, Gabe! you mind that emigrant family with the sick baby camped down the gulch! Well, the baby up and died last night."

"I want to know," said Gabriel, with thoughtful gravity.

"Yes, and that woman's in a heap of trouble. Couldn't you kinder drop in in passing and look after things?"

"I will," said Gabriel thoughtfully.

"I thought you'd like to know it, and I thought she'd like me to tell you," said the speaker, settling himself back again over the stove with the air of a man who had just fulfilled, at great personal sacrifice and labour, a work of supererogation.

"You're always thoughtful of other folks, Johnson," said Briggs, admiringly.

"Well, yes," said Johnson, with a modest serenity; "I allers allow that men in Californy ought to think of others besides themselves. A little keer and a little sabe on my part, and there's that family in the gulch made comfortable with Gabe around 'em."

Meanwhile this homely inciter of the unselfish virtues of One Horse Gulch had passed out into the rain and darkness. So conscientiously did he fulfil his various obligations, that it was nearly one o'clock before he reached his rude hut on the hill-side, a rough cabin of pine logs, so unpretentious and wild in exterior as to be but a slight improvement on nature. The vines clambered unrestrainedly over the bark-thatched roof; the birds occupied the crevices of the walls, the squirrel ate his acorns on the ridge pole without fear and without reproach.

Softly drawing the wooden peg that served as a bolt, Gabriel entered with that noiselessness and caution that were habitual to him. Lighting a candle by the embers of a dying fire, he carefully looked around him. The cabin was divided into two compartments by the aid of a canvas stretched between the walls, with a flap for the doorway. On a pine table lay several garments apparently belonging to a girl of seven or eight – a frock grievously rent and torn, a frayed petticoat of white flannel already patched with material taken from a red shirt, and a pair of stockings so excessively and sincerely darned, as to have lost nearly all of their original fabric in repeated bits of relief that covered almost the entire structure. Gabriel looked at these articles ruefully, and, slowly picking them up, examined each with the greatest gravity and concern. Then he took off his coat and boots, and having in this way settled himself into an easy dishabille, he took a box from the shelf, and proceeded to lay out thread and needles, when he was interrupted by a child's voice from behind the canvas screen.

"Is that you, Gabe?" – "Yes."

"Oh, Gabe, I got tired and went to bed."

"I see you did," said Gabriel drily, picking up a needle and thread that had apparently been abandoned after a slight excursion into the neighbourhood of a rent and left hopelessly sticking in the petticoat.

"Yes, Gabe; they're so awfully old!"

"Old!" repeated Gabe, reproachfully. "Old! Lettin' on a little wear and tear, they're as good as they ever were. That petticoat is stronger," said Gabriel, holding up the garment and eyeing the patches with a slight glow of artistic pride – "stronger, Olly, than the first day you put it on."

"But that's five years ago, Gabe."

"Well," said Gabriel, turning round and addressing himself impatiently to the screen, "wot if it is?"

"And I've growed."

"Growed!" said Gabriel, scornfully. "And haven't I let out the tucks, and didn't I put three fingers of the best sacking around the waist? You'll just ruin me in clothes."

Olly laughed from behind the screen. Finding, however, no response from the grim worker, presently there appeared a curly head at the flap, and then a slim little girl, in the scantiest of nightgowns, ran, and began to nestle at his side, and to endeavour to enwrap herself in his waistcoat.

"Oh, go 'way!" said Gabriel, with a severe voice and the most shameless signs of relenting in his face. "Go away! What do you care? Here I might slave myself to death to dress you in silks and satins, and you'd dip into the first ditch or waltz through the first underbrush that you kem across. You haven't got no sabe in dress, Olly. It ain't ten days ago as I iron-bound and copper-fastened that dress, so to speak, and look at it now! Olly, look at it now!" And he held it up indignantly before the maiden.

Olly placed the top of her head against the breast of her brother as a point d'appui, and began to revolve around him as if she wished to bore a way into his inmost feelings.

"Oh, you ain't mad, Gabe!" she said, leaping first over one knee and then over the other without lifting her head. "You ain't mad!"

Gabriel did not deign to reply, but continued mending the frayed petticoat in dignified silence.

"Who did you see down town?" said Olly, not at all rebuffed.

"No one," said Gabriel, shortly.

"You did! You smell of linnyments and peppermint," said Olly, with a positive shake of the head. "You've been to Briggs's and the new family up the gulch."

"Yes," said Gabriel, "that Mexican's legs is better, but the baby's dead. Jest remind me, to-morrow, to look through mother's things for suthin' for that poor woman."

"Gabe, do you know what Mrs. Markle says of you?" said Olly, suddenly raising her head.

"No," replied Gabriel, with an affectation of indifference that, like all his affectations, was a perfect failure.

"She says," said Olly, "that you want to be looked after yourself more'n all these people. She says you're just throwing yourself away on other folks. She says I ought to have a woman to look after me."

Gabriel stopped his work, laid down the petticoat, and taking the curly head of Olly between his knees, with one hand beneath her chin and the other on the top of her head, turned her mischievous face towards his. "Olly," he said, seriously, "when I got you outer the snow at Starvation Camp; when I toted you on my back for miles till we got into the valley; when we lay by thar for two weeks, and me a felling trees and picking up provisions here and thar, in the wood or the river, wharever thar was bird or fish, I reckon you got along as well – I won't say better – ez if you had a woman to look arter you. When at last we kem here to this camp, and I built this yer house, I don't think any woman could hev done better. If they could, I'm wrong, and Mrs. Markle's right."

Olly began to be uncomfortable. Then the quick instincts of her sex came to her relief, and she archly assumed the aggressive.

"I think Mrs. Markle likes you, Gabe."

Gabriel looked down at the little figure in alarm. There are some subjects whereof the youngest of womankind has an instinctive knowledge that makes the wisest of us tremble.

"Go to bed, Olly," said the cowardly Gabriel.

But Olly wanted to sit up, so she changed the subject.

"The Mexican you're tendin' isn't a Mexican, he's a Chileno; Mrs. Markle says so."

"Maybe; it's all the same. I call him a Mexican. He talks too straight, anyway," said Gabriel, indifferently.

"Did he ask you any more questions about – about old times?" continued the girl.

"Yes; he wanted to know everything that happened in Starvation Camp. He was rek'larly took with poor Gracie; asked a heap o' questions about her – how she acted, and seemed to feel as bad as we did about never hearing anything from her. I never met a man, Olly, afore, as seemed to take such an interest in other folks' sorrers as he did. You'd have tho't he'd been one of the party. And he made me tell him all about Dr. Devarges."

"And Philip?" queried Olly.

"No," said Gabriel, somewhat curtly.

"Gabriel," said Olly, sullenly, "I wish you didn't talk so to people about those days."

"Why?" asked Gabriel, wonderingly.

"Because it ain't good to talk about. Gabriel dear," she continued, with a slight quivering of the upper lip, "sometimes I think the people round yer look upon us sorter queer. That little boy that came here with the emigrant family wouldn't play with me, and Mrs. Markle's little girl said that we did dreadful things up there in the snow. He said I was a cannon-ball."

"A what?" asked Gabriel.

"A cannon-ball! He said that you and I" —

"Hush," interrupted Gabriel, sternly, as an angry flush came into his sunburnt cheek, "I'll jest bust that boy if I see him round yer agin."

"But, Gabriel," persisted Olly, "nobody" —

"Will you go to bed, Olly, and not catch your death yer on this cold floor asking ornery and perfectly ridickulus questions?" said Gabriel, briskly, lifting her to her feet. "Thet Markle girl ain't got no sense anyway – she's allers leading you round in ditches, ruinin' your best clothes, and keepin' me up half the night mendin' on 'em."

Thus admonished, Olly retreated behind the canvas screen, and Gabriel resumed his needle and thread. But the thread became entangled, and was often snappishly broken, and Gabriel sewed imaginary, vindictive stitches in the imaginary calves of an imaginary youthful emigrant, until Olly's voice again broke the silence.

"Oh, Gabe!"

"Yes," said Gabriel, putting down his work despairingly.

"Do you think – that Philip – ate Grace?"

Gabriel rose swiftly, and disappeared behind the screen. As he did so, the door softly opened, and a man stepped into the cabin. The new-comer cast a rapid glance around the dimly-lighted room, and then remained motionless in the doorway. From behind the screen came the sound of voices. The stranger hesitated, and then uttered a slight cough.